| Build it yourself | Enterprise EX suite | Embeddable engine (the Intelligent Wellbeing Engine) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to a working pulse | Months: survey UI, delivery, scoring, aggregation, dashboards, then the parts below that do not look like work until they are | Procurement, then the vendor's timeline. Built as a standalone tool; the four suite APIs we checked describe no way to run their surveys inside another product (details) | Free sandbox keys from one API call; production after a licence and certification |
| Instrument licensing | Your problem, and a real one, because several widely copied scales are not free for commercial use (the WHO-5, for example, is now distributed non-commercial-only). Check the rights to every item before you ship (details) | Chosen by the vendor | Pulse questions written by the IWE or free for commercial use. Each instrument carries a licence flag in the database, and the database refuses deep-dive instruments without licence evidence on file |
| Anonymity threshold | An if-statement someone writes, and someone else can remove; enforcement quality depends on review culture | Minimum group sizes published in help docs: most default to 5; some publish 3 or 4, and some let admins go to 3 (dated table) | n≥5 as a database CHECK constraint: sub-floor values are never stored, so no export or admin path can leak them |
| Statistical honesty (intervals, labels) | Possible if you have a statistician; without one, bare averages are the easy thing to ship | Depends on the vendor; ask for the method behind any interval or significance marker | 95% t-intervals stored with every shown value, provisional labels and suppression reasons in the row, and certification checks they are displayed |
| Safeguarding | Your duty of care to design, review and maintain | Depends on the vendor; ask who can edit or switch off the crisis signposting | The crisis signposting in the hosted check-in is fixed: Samaritans, Mind and the workplace EAP. The host cannot edit or remove it |
| Data portability | Total: it is your database | Depends on the vendor's export options (what four suite APIs export) | Aggregates export as JSON reports modelled on the open OWHS aggregate report, so they do not depend on our documentation |
| Cost shape | Engineering time up front, then maintenance forever; no per-user fee | Set by each vendor | Published rate card: 10p per enrolled user per month to 100k users; free for any employer measuring its own workforce. Deep dives (£1 per completed dive) and signposting (+3p) are coming, not sold yet |
| Breadth beyond measurement | Whatever you build | Their advantage is a complete employee-listening programme, with features well beyond measurement | Deliberately narrow. It covers measurement and honest aggregates, with signposting coming later, and it is built as a component |
Looking at a named vendor? What the Culture Amp, Viva Glint, Workleap Officevibe and Workday Peakon APIs do today, from their own documentation. Weighing a build in detail? What building it yourself involves.
Measurement is your product's core differentiator, you have psychometric and statistical capability in-house, and you have budgeted the unglamorous parts: instrument rights clearance, disclosure control, safeguarding review, and the maintenance tail. Full control is a real advantage and some teams should take it.
You want a complete employee-listening programme for your own organisation, with consultants, action planning and HRIS integration, and you do not need the measurement inside your own product. The big suites are good at what they are built for. For the four whose APIs we checked on 28 September 2026, the documentation described no way to run their surveys inside another product (survey APIs compared).
You are a product team that needs credible, defensible wellbeing measurement inside your own application without becoming a psychometrics company, and you want to prove the honesty properties to your enterprise clients' auditors. That is the case the IWE is built for, and the rate card is public.
The n≥5 constraint is published verbatim. The interactive demo shows suppression happening. The export is modelled on the open OWHS aggregate report, and every field is listed on the open export page. And any employer can use the engine free, forever, at alltoogether.com, which is the strongest evidence we can offer that the licensed product is priced on distribution alone.